A member of Berlin’s Jewish community with family in hard-hit Staten Island, N.Y. has started a clothing drive for those affected by superstorm Sandy. Berliners have been encouraged to bring clothing and small toys to the Chabad center in Berlin on Tuesday and Wednesday. The items will be brought to the American Embassy and Red…
Jews and Muslims in Berlin demonstrated for the right to carry out ritual circumcisions, a right that has been endangered in Germany. Under the slogan “On Knife’s Edge: Religious Freedom,” some 300 demonstrators rallied Saturday at Bebelplatz, the site of the 1933 Nazi book burnings, to protest the May ruling in a Cologne court that…
One of Germany’s 16 states has declared circumcision legal. Berlin, Germany’s capital and itself a state, is the first to declare the practice legal following Cologne court ruled in June that non-medical circumcisions on children amounted to a criminal offense, according to DPA, a German news wire. National legislation is also pending to legalize circumcision….
Jewish school girls were verbally assaulted with anti-Semitic slurs in Berlin on Monday, in the second attack on Jews reported in the German capital in less than a week. Last week, Daniel Alter, a Berlin rabbi, was assaulted by youths in West Berlin in a suspected anti-Semitic attack, witnessed by his 6-year-old daughter. Alter told…
“Berlin wears a yarmulke,” the popular BZ local newspaper declared to its readers on Saturday. The reason: the front page presented a photo of five Berlin celebrities posing with skullcaps – including Mayor Klaus Wowereit, one of the best known gay politicians in Europe. The city’s residents decided to show their solidarity with the city’s…
Prosecutors in Berlin dismissed a criminal complaint lodged against a rabbi for performing circumcisions. The Jerusalem Post reported on Thursday that the complaint for “causing bodily harm” against Rabbi Yitshak Ehrenberg was dropped on August 15 as “unfounded.” An opponent of circumcision lodged the complaint last month after Ehrenberg defended the practice on a television…
“Lulu,” the unlikely collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, rapidly went from being one of the year’s most anticipated releases to being the most reviled album of 2011. USA Today called it “arty sludge” and gave it one star. Writing in Grantland, Chuck Klosterman lambasted it as “a successful simulation of how it feels to…
As World War I neared its end, Germany turned its focus to internal security. Serious unrest in Berlin during the summer of 1918 led the Prussian Ministry of the Interior to make a surprising decision. Bernhard Weiss, a little-known Jewish war hero and recipient of the Iron Cross First Class, was ordered to leave the…
